Page 23 of A Star is Scorned

At that, Flynn genuinely laughed. Who was this woman?

She was prim and proper. A lady in every sense of the word.

Her raven-black hair and Cupid’s bow mouth made her seem as fragile as a porcelain doll.

In short, the antithesis of everything Flynn was drawn to in a woman.

But she ripped the rug from beneath him so frequently, he supposed he should get used to standing on hardwood floor.

Every answer she gave only led to more questions.

He wanted to read an Encyclopedia of Olivia Blount and commit it to memory so he could understand every bit of her.

Rhonda looked as if she was going to blow her top at any minute. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her face was so scrunched up in frustration that she resembled a pug. She tapped her foot in irritation, and Flynn thought she might only be moments away from a full-on temper tantrum.

“Uncle Stan, I’m thirsty,” she whined. Jesus, how had Flynn been remotely attracted to her for even a second? She was a petulant child.

“Rhonda, you are perfectly capable of getting yourself a drink. I am not your babysitter.”

Flynn almost swallowed his tongue at Devlin’s retort, while Rhonda harrumphed and stomped off in the direction of the bar.

Devlin shot one last look of disdain at Flynn. “You’re on thin ice with me, Banks. Don’t you forget it.”

Before Flynn could reply, Devlin followed his niece to the bar, leaving Flynn and Livvy with Will Hays.

Flynn needed to try to clear the air. “Mr. Hays, whatever Mr. Devlin or Miss Powers told you—”

The president of the Motion Picture Association held up his hand, signaling Flynn to stop.

“No need to explain, Banks. Clearly, Rhonda was confused. If I’ve heard Stanley say it once, I’ve heard it a million times.

Besides the moral turpitude of the motion picture industry, his chief complaint in life is how much Rhonda’s mother coddles that girl.

She never learned how to take no for answer.

And now Rhonda expects Uncle Stan to be her champion.

” Hays looked over his shoulder in their direction and sighed.

“But I better go follow them all the same. Lovely to meet you, Miss De Lesseps.”

Flynn stared after them in disbelief. Had it really been that easy?

If so, Harry was a genius. Rhonda had tried to ruin his life, to get Will Hays and the lackeys of the Production Code Administration to blow up his career.

But her little ploy to humiliate Flynn in front of her Uncle Stan had blown up in her face.

Because Rhonda Powers hadn’t accounted for Liv de Lesseps. Hell, neither had he.

***

Flynn picked at the dry piece of chicken on his plate in dismay.

He could count on one hand the number of decent meals he’d eaten at a Hollywood fundraiser.

When events were responsible for feeding over one hundred people, the food was always bland and flavorless.

It was yet another reason he found nights like this tiresome, preferring instead to spend them in the back room at Musso’s or watching the sunset from his house.

He cast his eyes at the program lying next to his fork.

This fundraiser was interminable. Was this still the same piece the Philharmonic had been playing for the last fifteen minutes?

“Variations for Orchestra” by Arnold Schoenberg?

It was hard to tell, given the entire thing was a morass of chaotic noise.

He’d enjoyed the Bach. He’d spent most of the Stravinsky staring at Livvy, enjoying the way the undulating line of her body, clad in her purple chiffon gown, practically shimmered with excitement.

He’d sworn she’d been tapping her toes. At a classical piece!

Hell, he had even endured the droning speech from the Symphony Association’s president, asking every guest to open their hearts and their wallets to help save the orchestra.

When they’d passed around a plate, the expectant grin on Livvy’s face had him reaching for his pocketbook and placing a crisp hundred-dollar bill on the collection platter.

She’d given him a look of such pure joy at this act of generosity that he’d turned his wallet upside down and emptied the rest of its contents without thinking twice.

The thought that he would do anything to make her smile like that flitted through his mind. But he dismissed it as gratitude for how she’d saved his hide with Devlin and Hays.

He flinched as the violins and French horns clashed in a cacophony of notes. This was grim. He was shocked his ears hadn’t started to bleed yet.

He glanced at Livvy, expecting to see the same blissful rapture on her face that he had committed to memory throughout the previous two numbers.

But instead, she was studying her napkin.

If he dipped his head just so, he could make out a grimace pulling at the edges of her mouth.

She hated this song as much as he did. It was strangely satisfying.

He looked at her plate, where her chicken also remained largely untouched. She’d made her mashed potatoes into two mountains and mixed in flecks of the broccoli to make it look like a snowy forest. It was whimsical and lovely and unexpected. That was Livvy, to a T.

He leaned over. “Would you like to go somewhere a little less…atonal?” he murmured in her ear. She grabbed at the napkin in her lap, disguising her laugh as a cough. Her eyes darted to the table next to theirs where Harry was seated, flanked by Hays and Devlin. “Won’t he—”

Flynn shook his head. “We came, we’ve had our picture taken. You won over Will Hays. He should be more than satisfied.”

She furrowed her brow and bit her lip. “I don’t know…” She kept looking between him and Harry. “I should probably stay; I wouldn’t want to give Harry reason to scold me. Besides, the studio car is supposed to pick me up here. How will they find me?”

“Shhhh,” hissed another guest at their table, a woman with gray hair piled into a mass of curls in a style that hadn’t been popular in this century.

Livvy looked at Flynn as she shook with giggles and rolled her eyes. He could just make out the tip of her delectably pink tongue behind her napkin as she stuck it out in the direction of the shusher.

“I’ll drive you home,” he whispered. She still looked uncertain, her desire to leave clearly conflicting with her need to please Harry.

As if to punctuate the urgency of his offer, the clarinets and piccolos joined in a discordant trilling of chords that had Flynn fearing for the durability of the crystal goblets at each place setting.

Livvy winced at the sound and nodded. “Okay, I can’t stand it any longer.”

She put her hand in Flynn’s. It felt right—small, yet so strong—and her fingers knotted between his. His stomach lurched with excitement at the press of her palm. Or maybe he was woozy after three cocktails and just a bite of dry chicken and flavorless broccoli.

They stood together and he pulled her to the door, ignoring the mutters and gasps that erupted. He looked over his shoulder and stifled a laugh when he watched Livvy hold her hand to her head in Harry’s direction, feigning a headache.

“You know he won’t believe that for a second,” he growled in her ear.

“Yes, he will.” She looked quite pleased with herself. “Because I’m not you.”

She had him there.